Wednesday, 15 June 2016

Don’t Shoot the Messenger; Destroy the Message

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions
of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the opinions of
any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the
article.

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In the wake of the Orlando
shooting, some people have posted links of Christian pastors who support
the shooting because the victims were gay and because Christianity abhors
homosexuality. Most people react to these posts by calling the pastors bigots
and demonizing them. They refer to their speeches as hate speeches and ask
YouTube to remove the links where they are supporting these killings.

But all of these
people are misguided.

I saw one of these
videos because one of my friends, in a similar vein, shared a news article
about a Pastor Roger Jimenez, with a link to a video of his,
who said that he was sorry the killer did not “finish the job.” Pastor Jimenez
would have liked the killer to kill everyone in the bar because they were
sinners owing to the fact that they were gay.

I saw the video.
Pastor Jimenez is very clear and articulate. I thought what he says in the
video is very logical and clear. Christians should react to this incident as
Christians, he says, and then he proceeds to explain what exactly the Bible says about homosexuality. He quotes passage after
passage, verbatim, from the Bible, that
clearly talk about how God views homosexuality. There is absolutely no
ambiguity about what God wants for these sinners. The implication is clear: if
you are to be a true Christian, and if you claim to follow the Bible, then you
must feel as he does – that those gays deserved to die, because that is what
God would have wanted.

So, is the fault with
Pastor Jimenez or the Bible that he follows? The Bible that all Christians
follow? Which is also common to Jews and Muslims? (For the most part, with some
minor variations, the Old Testament is common).

This is the book that
is considered so holy that witnesses are asked to testify in Court after
swearing on it. If the book is considered sacred, can we blame Pastor Jimenez
from simply quoting from it and obtaining the logical inferences? I do not
think anything that Pastor Jimenez said was inconsistent with the Bible. The
God of the Bible would want us to
kill all the homosexuals in the world. If we allow the Bible to be called holy,
then Pastor Jimenez said nothing wrong.

If, on the other hand,
we say that what he said was abhorrent, then understand that the abhorrent stuff
came from a book that we say is holy. You cannot have it both ways.

It is kind of silly to
expect followers of a religion to not
follow the teachings in their holy book. Somehow we expect that Christians
should selectively read from the Bible. Why? Why put this burden on the
religious follower?

No. If you think what
he said was wrong, change the Bible!
Christianity, and every other religion, needs another reformation to keep with
the times (to the extent that one needs religion at all.) Pastor Jimenez has
done nothing wrong in simply quoting passages from what you accept as a holy book and giving the logical conclusion from
the teaching in that book!!

This highlights one
theme that I have believed in for a long time – that the key to changing the offensive
behaviour of religious people is changing
their offensive scriptures.

As long as the Quran
says that it is okay to stone a woman to death for adultery, you are going to have Islamic governments
practice such laws. When their religion places women so low, of course women,
rather than their rapists, will be punished when they are raped by men. If
Sharia says the penalty for stealing is to cut off the hand, should you really
be surprised when an Islamic government actually institutes this punishment?
No.

It is the same Quran
that the killer, Omar Mateen, had read. The same Quran which shares the Old
Testament with Christianity. Which, like the Bible, teaches its followers that homosexuality
is a sin. That those who are gay or lesbian are sinners in Allah’s eyes. Should
we be surprised that someone who believes his religious scripture takes it upon
himself to kill people in a gay bar?

It is the same in any
religion – only the themes may be different. When Hinduism explicitly tells you
that high caste people should not mix with untouchables (yes, the scriptures explicitly say so – do not tell me it is a social
custom. I have studied it, and it is in the scriptures), how do you expect upper-caste
Hindus today to intermarry with Dalits, allow them into their temples. or even
mix socially or eat together with them, when they know the caste of the other person?
If they do so, they are disobeying their religious scriptures. In other words,
a true Hindu cannot be free from caste prejudice, as Ambedkar said long ago in
his “Annihilation of Caste.”

If religious scripture
says something, then true followers of the religion are bound to obey the
scripture. By asking them to be more liberal, you are essentially saying they
should be apostates. Is this fair?

No, the solution is to
change religious scripture for the better. It would be best to completely
abandon religion and make everyone a humanist, but that would be wishing for
the moon. So this is the next best thing: Get religious leaders to agree to
change their scripture; ask them to tell their followers that these were wrong
notions that are not central to the message of their God; that these have crept
into their scripture over centuries; and need to be removed.

Religious leaders may
not oblige, and it is quite likely there will be resistance. Religious leaders
may plead inability – that they have no authority to change what they consider
the word of God. Then it is the job of individual nation-states to declare offensive portions of the religious
scripture of each religion illegal – that anyone preaching these offensive
parts of their religion can be imprisoned and fined. If religions will not reform
themselves, then civil society has to step in. If Popes and Pontiffs and Imams
will not declare parts of their religion wrong, then Governments have to step
in and tell them that yes, their God was wrong about some things. Anyone found
preaching any of the offensive parts or propagating them in any form – in print,
on air, or on the internet – should be arrested forthwith.

To be sure, there will
be people arguing that this infringes on the right to practice their religion.
But if your religion asks its followers to kill others or discriminate against
others, is it not against the principles of your Constitution? How can you
allow something unconstitutional and illegal to be preached and create a social
crisis? Arguments for freedom of religion are untenable when considering the
high cost of allowing these passages to be preached. The Constitution should be
the holiest book of the land, and any holy book that contradicts the
Constitution must be brought in line with it.

One cannot have two mutually contradicting codes of conduct for the same behaviours under two authorities. As Abraham
Lincoln famously said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

2 comments:

For your information, The quote of Abraham Lincoln itself is from the Bible. I do not agree with the pastor's statement at the same time I don't agree with your solution either. Extremes are always easy. If that pastor went to o e extreme, you have gone to the other extreme, both are equally bad. What is needed is balanced thinking.

I believe I AM presenting the balanced alternative. I disagree with you that my solution is extreme. I have not said that you should DISCARD ALL SCRIPTURE - THAT would be extreme. I have only said that you should discard those parts of scripture that are offensive and also that contradict the law of the land. How is that in any way extreme??

The fact that Lincoln's quote was based on the bible is irrelevant to the point I am making.